crossfire.
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if you sent us down so we could build a playground for the sinners to play as saints

Date - 23 May 1997
Location - 12 Cilgant Heulwen

There was lying... and then there was this. And part of Meredith didn't even know how to make sense of it all. How in Merlin's name could she ever wrap her head around this madness? And she had certainly tried. Salazar's sake, had she tried. She had really tried. Because Meredith did not want to accept the information that was staring her right in the face. She couldn't accept it. With every moment she stared at it, though, it made her life crumble and crack just a bit more. This couldn't be real... she would have noticed something. Her, of all people. Healer Powell, Order of the Phoenix member, proud believer in meritocracy and the good in humans, she should have seen this coming from miles away. And yet it had bulldozed over her all the same. It had shaken her to the core and torn her apart in a way she would have never imagined possible. Meredith didn't want it to be real. She wanted to blink and have it all disappear. All the evidence and memories of it, gone, completely. A part of Meredith was at a loss for how this could have possibly happened.

And another part of her was furious. She was so angry she could have broken a glass with her bare hands. So angry she could have destroyed the whole damn house with a Beater's bat. For seven years of marriage, he lied to her. He kept secrets from her when she had been nothing but honest. For the first time ever, Meredith had worn her heart on her sleeve and now she was paying for it tenfold. When Meredith had first opened that file they had managed to get from the Ministry office of the former Death Eater, Meredith had been worried. If a Death Eater had Carson's picture on hand, the worst case scenarios were running through her mind. He was in danger. He had to be. Her stupid mind hadn't even thought about the possibility that... that he was a Death Eater. Until they had read deeper and everything started to click and everyone else in the room just... looked at her. With a mix of pity and skepticism and something else that was just as bloody ridiculous. But the one thing that had tipped her over into pure anger had been turning over the photo and seeing Idris' name scribbled on the back, along with their address.

One wrong move. One wrong word. And who would they come after? Not Carson. No, that was not how purebloods and Slytherins worked. They would be coming for Idris. And that simple possibility had been Meredith's tipping point into sheer anger. That he would put their son in danger - and for what? She really didn't know how or why he had ever thought this would have been a good idea. Meredith knew that his parents were less than tolerant in some respects, but... she had not expected this. Maybe she should have. But in her mind, that was not Carson. Not the man she married. And yet, here she was. Sat at the dining table, tightly clenching his photo in her hands. Meredith's heart was racing in anticipation for whenever he got home - from 'work,' but she now doubted that that was even true. Her emotions were fluctuating like violent sea waves. Sadness. Anger. Disbelief. Heartache. And then back to the top of the order to go through it all over again. Every bloody few seconds, it would just start over. She just... she wanted to be calm. She wanted it to be over. Merlin, what else was he hiding from her?

Meredith knew she had to keep herself together, but the issue there was that usually Carson would be the one to help with that. The calm, easygoing one to her stressed out, rigid mindset. And now he was the bloody cause of her stress and it just left Meredith in a horrid state of confusion.

The sound of the lock turning snapped her out of her thoughts, and Meredith looked up from the photo in her hand. It was a little wrinkled by now, from how tightly she had been clenching it, but it was the same photo. Her own husband, staring back at her. Idris' name and their address on the back. She heard footsteps, and... there he was, coming into view. Meredith stayed in her seat, clenching her jaw as her eyes remained fixed on him, a stony expression on her face. Words were suddenly hard to come by, even though she had had nothing but profanities a short hour ago. "Idris is with my mum," she finally said. Then, turning her gaze back to the photo, she added, "You should sit down." Her heart was about to leap out of her chest. She... she couldn't do this. And yet, it was the only outcome that Meredith could keep thinking of. She knew how the summer would end. Or, at least, the Order had its suspicions, and using that information, Meredith knew she had to cut her losses... before she lost the one person she loved more than anything in the world. But it was hurting her, and it would hurt her for Merlin knew how long.

@carson
878 words
outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

He'd trade his guns for love
But he's caught in the crossfire

❧

It had been… complicated, as of late. The word barely suited the situation, but he wasn’t sure that there was a single word in the dictionary that encompassed exactly what he was experiencing. He was a Baines. There were certain expectations that came along with that. His family were halfbloods, it wasn’t like they had some blood purity sacred twenty-eight bullshit that he had to follow through on. There wasn’t. But there were certain ideals that his parents agreed with, when it came to the Dark Lord. Niles and Sable Baines wanted to make sure that their interests were being expressed. That was how they had worded it, anyway. As if the Dark Lord cared about the interests of other people.

He didn’t, obviously. Either his parents had been naïve enough to think that he did, or they had just thought that it was a nicer way of wording what they wanted him to do. Even as he presented himself with those options--which he had time and time again over the passing years, he knew that it had been the latter. They were not foolish people. They knew what kind of person the Dark Lord was, if he could even be considered a person at all. They had just wanted a Baines amongst the Death Eaters, and it was certainly not going to be them.

That was fine. It wasn’t like she was going to ask his father why he didn’t become a Death Eater himself if it was so important to him. A part of him wished that he had done that, if only to see his reaction, but that was long in the past now. What mattered now was the fact that it had been him. It had needed to be him. Crispin didn’t have the makings of a Death Eater. He was too good of a person. Carina was… well, his baby sister. He wasn’t going to refuse to join himself and have them looking at Carina next. If they wanted a Baines to be a Death Eater, it was going to be him. Process of elimination and all that shit.

The worst part of it was lying to Meredith. He wasn’t going to pretend he was the best person in the world. She was in the Order and he came from a family that did dark magic. Granted, they just didn’t happen to think that kind of magic was as bad as the rest of the world did, but still. He was hardly the best person in the world. She fought for equality and all that, and he was a Death Eater behind her back. But it was necessary. Family was family. She was his family too, but so was Crispin, and he’d had to look after him.

Crispin was Mere’s favorite in-law anyway. A part of him had wondered if he could tell her about it, just because he knew that she cared about Cirspin. She wouldn’t want to see him hurt or getting involved in something that he was too good of a person for. Too soft of a person for, really.

But he had known that he couldn’t tell her, because she wouldn’t understand. Even being married for as long as they had--and seven years was quite some time in his book, there were some things that she wouldn’t be able to understand. This was one of those things. She would just tell him that he should ignore his parents… that they all should. She’d probably throw in some colorful language--she wasn’t the biggest fan of his mother, after all and that feeling was mutual. And maybe he could have ignored them. Maybe he could have told them to go to hell. Maybe he should have. But Crispin wouldn’t have. He would have been easy to guilt into it, so Carson had just decided that it was better for him to just offer himself and make sure that his older brother didn’t have to worry.

That meant lying. It was hardly the easiest thing to do to his wife, but he was a good liar. And Meredith was too trusting. Maybe not in general, but she trusted him. He hadn’t given her any reason not to. That was why this had been so simple to do, even if he felt bad about it. He could spin any story he wanted and she believed it because he was her husband and why would he lie to her? Why would she have any reason to believe that he’d been anywhere other than exactly where she’d told him that he was going? He didn’t know how long he could keep this up. He hoped indefinitely. But with Meredith in the Order, he wasn’t sure how likely that was. It wasn’t like he was the most heavily involved Death Eater in the world, after all.

But just like there were expectations that his family had, there were also expectations when it came to having that mark and what it meant. He couldn’t exactly do nothing. And if the Dark Lord ended up getting what he wanted, he wanted to make sure that he had the means to protect Meredith and Idris. He needed to be in a position to do that, and that meant taking this ‘work’ seriously.

It had been a night like any other. He’d ended up getting a few drinks with Beckett once they were done. His friend--and Olivia, both thought that he should tell Meredith the truth but they didn’t quite understand that it was better this way. By the time he was actually heading home, he knew that he was running late, but he was already resigned to the fact that he’d have to come up with some excuse for it. He likely wouldn’t put all that much effort into it and just say that he was getting drinks with Beck. That was partially the truth, after all.

When he made it into the house, what he hadn’t expected was Meredith sitting at the table. And he couldn’t quite place the reason behind why she looked so grim--except for the fact that he was late, of course. That was probably it. Letting out a sigh, he headed over to the sideboard to grab the decanter and pour himself a drink. “I’m late, I know. I’m sorry if I worried you--was just out with Beck.” Before putting the lid back on the decanter, he glanced back at his wife. “Want a drink?”

@ meredith

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","lyric1uni"]crossfire

[attr="class","lyricbguni"]

[attr="class","lyric2uni"]Heaven, if you sent us down
So we can build a playground
For the sinners to play as saints

[attr="class","textboduni"]She didn't want it to be true. Meredith just wanted to pinch herself and wake up from this nightmare. Everything that had been going on over the last year hadn't gotten to her all that much. She had kept it all at bay, going about her business as usual. There was stirring and tension, but Meredith could just rest easy in her job. She could do her part, and that was enough. She would watch out for the people that needed it, and then she had her own life to worry about. Her and Carson... and Idris, just a month old. That hadn't really been in the plans, but now Meredith didn't even want to imagine life without him. Her son completed a part of her that she would have never thought to be empty. Meredith had never thought of herself as a maternal person but... this had all been good. The three of them. It wasn't perfect or picturesque or any of that cliché rubbish. It was simply exactly what she had needed, even if she hadn't known it. Things had been so happy... so peaceful, at least for Meredith. With everything raging on in the rest of the magical world, she had Carson and Idris to return home to.

And now... it was as if someone had flipped a switch. One that made Mere realize her supposedly happy life had simply been shrouded in darkness, and it was anything but happy. It was filled with secrets and lies and - and that mark. She had seen it on Aeron's arm, and that had been the end of them. Martyn had been so furious that day, and Aeron had been spouting his usual bitterness... and Meredith had been stuck in the middle of it all. She had decided she didn't care, on that day. She didn't care what Aeron did or whatever rubbish people wanted to believe in. She just wanted to protect the things that were close to her now, and that meant keeping all of that well out of her life. The only reason she had joined the Order was because it was the one thing that worked towards just ending all the murder. Between everything that had gone down with Aeron and joining the Order, Meredith had no reason to believe any of that would be entering her life. She was hardly close with Ellis, or any of the MacDougals really, except for Isobel. This... this wasn't supposed to be her life.

This, though, was undeniable. The longer Mere stared at that stupid picture, the more she just wanted to break down and cry. She hated that he had made this choice. A path riddled with nothing but darkness and death. How could he have made that choice, with her and Idris in his life? She hated that he had kept it from her, for... only Merlin knew how long. They... they were supposed to trust each other. And - Morgana above, Meredith was such an idiot. The number of times she mentioned the Order was just rushing at her like a train now. She hated that this was the way she had found out, that she had had to face everyone else in the Order meeting that night and present it all as if it was absolutely run of the mill information. The looks of pity and shock - she hated that like nothing else. She hated how utterly unsurprised her mother had looked when Meredith had dropped off Idris earlier. She hated seeing her son's name on that paper, scrawled on there by some Death Eater that was probably making a mental note of Carson's weaknesses like he was some pawn.

Above all, though, she hated that she didn't hate Carson. That she would never - could never - hate him, despite everything staring back at her in that moment. He was the charming potioneer with the clever smile. She was the Healer that always had an answer for everything. It had been an instant click, that day that Meredith would always remember with near perfection. The fact that made all of this so painful was that she loved him. That she probably always would. But that didn't change the fact that now she had a son to protect and he had lied to her about it all. Want and need were... two very different things. And in the middle of the war, Meredith had to set aside the things that she wanted.

Meredith kept her sights focused on the table, on the photo in front of her, and then closed her eyes for just a moment as Carson talked. She looked up finally, letting out a shaky breath. "Being late... sounds like child's play now," she said quietly with a short, bitter laugh, glancing around for a moment as she tried to steel herself. Meredith knew she needed to be firm. She couldn't let this get the best of her. Her eyes finally settled on Carson, expression as blank as she could possibly muster, but she could feel the light frown on her face. "Carson, just - you really should sit down," she repeated, her voice low.

@ the one i'll always love | 859 words | outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Heaven, if you sent us down

[attr="class","cscriptde"]so we can build a playground

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]For the sinners to play as saints[break]
You'd be so proud of what we've made

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Lying to his wife had become somewhat second nature to him at this point. That wasn’t something that he’d ever thought that he’d be proud of, but it was necessary nonetheless. He couldn’t help it. In order to keep his brother safe, he’d been the Baines to take the Dark Mark. And in order to keep Meredith safe, she couldn’t know about it. There was just no reason to involve her in all of that.
[break][break]
Salazar knew that her relationship with his family was already complicated enough. She didn’t get along with his mother already. He didn’t think that they would at all benefit from her finding out that it had been his parents that had insisted that one of their children get the Dark Mark and follow the Dark Lord. There was just no way that would elicit a good reaction at all. It was, in his opinion, much better to keep Meredith in the dark. It was safer that way.
[break][break]
Of course, it all would have been a lot easier if she hadn’t joined the Order. She didn’t know it, but she was fighting against him. That had been a challenge. It had made everything more complicated. If she had been on the sidelines of this war, then he could have gone on being a Death Eater without worrying. He would have done what was expected of him and would know that she was safe. The Death Eaters weren’t going to target one of their own’s wife. It was some kind of silver lining to the whole thing, knowing that she would be safe. But her being in the Order just shot all of that to hell. Now she was in danger just like the rest of that organization. It wasn’t ideal, but he couldn’t exactly tell her that she couldn’t join. She wouldn’t take that lying down.
[break][break]
He'd just had to be cautious. It had worked out all right so far, anyway. There was no telling how long that would last, but he would take what he could get at his point.
[break][break]
At least this way, he knew that his brother was safe. That his sister was safe. They got to stay on the sidelines and that had made doing what he did worth it. Crispin wouldn’t have been able to do this. He just wouldn’t have. Carina… probably would have made a better Death Eater than Carson would have, but she was his younger sister. He wasn’t going to pass that off on her. That wasn’t fair either.
[break][break]
It was just easier to do it himself. It put him in control of the situation, it made him more at ease knowing that his siblings were safe and that he could at least try to look out for Meredith if he came face to face with her. That hadn’t happened, thankfully, but it could. Merlin knew that it could at any day. If that happened, at least he would be there. He could make sure that she was safe. Carina wouldn’t do that. And Crispin… well, he would have, but he wouldn’t have survived it himself. This was for the best. A difficult situation, yes, but a necessary one.
[break][break]
One that made him better at lying to his wife than he would have ever thought possible. So, he hadn’t thought all that much of her waiting up for him at the kitchen table. Carson knew that he was late. He figured she was just put out about that, and he would have to come up with some story that she would undoubtedly believe. Because why would he lie?
[break][break]
At her words, he paused to glance over at her. If she wasn’t mad at him for being late, then what was this about. Picking the glass up, he turned to face her again, and this time really tried to get a read on her expression. She wasn’t giving much away, but he could tell that she was trying quite hard to keep her expression neutral. “All right…” He said, finally, after a few more beats of silence. Pushing off from the counter, he went over to the table and pulled a chair out to sit down.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]698 ● @ mere

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","backguni"]

[attr="class","lyric1uni"]crossfire

[attr="class","lyricbguni"]

[attr="class","lyric2uni"]Heaven, if you sent us down
So we can build a playground
For the sinners to play as saints

[attr="class","textboduni"]The Order was constantly on their toes. They were expecting the worst, any day now. Attacks in the muggle world were only getting more and more common. People were still trying to live their lives, though, and Meredith couldn't blame them. If anything, it felt like the last chance to get one's affairs in order, before the world went to hell like everyone expected it to. She didn't want that to be their reality. Waiting for war was not the point. Preventing war. That was what Meredith wanted. It was almost impossible to change someone's mind, especially someone of the pureblood elite. Meredith had gone to school with a lot of them, after all, and she had long ago accepted that changing people's minds was an impossible feat. Quite honestly, she didn't care for that. Meredith knew what she believed was right, and she would stand by that. The one thing she wanted to avoid at all costs, though, was a war. Death and violence... and over what? Over a delusional sense of entitlement among a minority of the population?

It was ridiculous. She had taken some twisty path to join the Order because the last thing she wanted was a war. Having a family during a war was... difficult. Meredith wasn't an idealist, by any stretch. She knew that fighting was, sometimes, unavoidable. She just thought it should be over something that was actually worth fighting for. If people were going into something dangerous, head first, Meredith had always thought there needed to be some logic to it. Some calculation to determine if there was anything to gain, even. But she had always been like that. Always the voice of reason, the one to take calculated risks and toe the line of being just nice enough to the worst people. She wasn't brash, and Meredith didn't think that anyone with a good head on their shoulders even wanted a war--which was why she had wanted to join the Order. All that aside, though... they didn't even have the power to stop a war, it seemed. That was the kicker, unfortunately. It was what got to her the most.

Ever the logical mind, Meredith had been able to divide the source of her anger among two reasons. First and foremost, the obvious point: this would put Idris in danger. Whether Carson knew this or not, whether he wanted to admit it, that didn't matter. It was true. She didn't care when he had taken the Mark relative to when Idris had been born. That didn't change the fact that if Carson made a wrong move, the Death Eaters wouldn't be quick to kill him. No, they'd go after Idris first, maybe Meredith as well, let him suffer for a bit, and then kill him. She knew this with absolute certainty. Meredith, unfortunately, had spent a great deal of time among the worst of the worst. She was strong enough in her own resolve to come out of that relatively unchanged--but much less ignorant than most people. There was an ugly truth about how Death Eaters operated, whether people liked to think on it or not.

And second of all... Meredith didn't understand what he was fighting for. This didn't seem like him--but then again, only Morgana knew how long he had been lying to her, so maybe it was exactly like him. For all she knew, anyways, there was a whole other side of him that she had yet to meet. Meredith wanted to understand, but she couldn't. This was not a cause worth dying for. Few things were, anyways, but this was definitely not one of them. It killed her inside that she couldn't even begin to understand what was happening. Meredith was not used to not understanding things.

Her hands crumpled the small photo in her hand for a moment, still glancing down at it as Carson sat down across from her. She knew she had to steel herself to get through this. Her own emotions didn't matter. Meredith had already made her decision, and it was what was best for their son's survival. Her son. "I found this..." Meredith started, glancing up at Carson as she slowly slid the photo across the table towards him, "alongside a very long list of active Death Eaters." She paused and took a breath as she removed her hand from the photo. "I'm curious to know if you had a plan when you let one of the most dangerous people in the country give you a tattoo, or if you were just... winging it," Meredith continued, her voice steady and pointed. There was an inkling of sarcasm seeping in, an all too common defensive tic.

@ carson | 784 words | outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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